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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Citizens were considered subversive if they did not participate in what efforts?

2. What did the average soldiers believe about the meaning of the war?

3. Which of the following is NOT a major media type that supported the predominant media sources?

4. The compensation from the title of Chapter 15 refers to what?

5. Which of the following is one major type of resource that American citizens were deprived of during the war?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did the media interpret the suffering of the nation's citizenry?

2. How did the average soldier view the war?

3. How were books adapted for soldiers' use, and how did these changes persist after the war?

4. How did soldiers react to the media's presentation of the war?

5. How did most media outlets react to the requirements placed on them?

6. How did advertisers think of and take advantage of the war?

7. When were more enduring war novels written and why were they written during this time period?

8. How and why did the media fail to report the entire story of the war?

9. What critical knowledge did an average soldier typically lack?

10. Why did wartime reporting often fail to capture the realities of warfare?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The reading experience of citizens and soldiers alike during the war was bland and uniform. In the media and even in other mediums such as fiction, poetry, and films, there was a tendency towards homogenization that became mind-numbing to many.

1) Discuss the general reading experience of soldiers and citizens during World War II. Explain some of the problems in the publishing industry from an entertainment perspective.

2) Describe the common American soldiers interest in reading and how, why, and when this distraction became common in the ranks.

3) Explain some of the changes in the publishing market that were brought about by the war.

Essay Topic 2

When it entered into World War II, America was at a disadvantage in terms of its equipment, and struggled long and hard to correct these problems.

1) Explain the state of military equipment in the American army when the US entered the war. Discuss some of the problems in design, scale and distribution.

2) Describe some of the consequences of these inadequacies for American troops on the battlefield.

3) Discuss the process that brought America's army up to date and in line with modern standards.

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the war, the media made a concerted effort to accentuating the positive aspects of stories about the war and to downplay, misrepresent, or ignore negative aspects. This gave Americans a sanitized vision of the war that was easier to continue to support than the real war.

1) Explain the policy of "accentuating the positive" in the media, and explain why it was adopted.

2) Discuss the types of stories that were likely to be reported by the mainstream state and public media and the impression of the war that these reports gave to the common citizen.

3) Describe some of the grizzly, unsettling, and unpleasant aspects of the war that were unlikely to be reported on. Discuss how these types of stories and details were handled.

4) Discuss the impact that the policy of "accentuating the positive" had on American soldiers.

(see the answer keys)

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